Baseball Prospectus Top 100 Prospects

Baseball Prospectus released their Top 100 Prospects for the 2009 season this week. For the Pirates, it was the usual suspects making the list in the following order:

4. Pedro Alvarez
25. Andrew McCutchen
91. Jose Tabata

McCutchen dropped one spot from last year’s list. Other Pirates who were on the 2008 list were Steve Pearce (43) and Neil Walker (94). Walker fell off the top 100 this year, and I’m guessing Pearce doesn’t qualify due to his major league time.

Jose Tabata was ranked 48th, and took a big fall to 91, probably due to the season he had before coming to the Pirates organization. Andy LaRoche was ranked 14th last year, but like Pearce, probably doesn’t qualify this year due to having more time in the majors.

As for the guy sitting at the top of this year’s list: Matt Wieters.

UPDATE (2/16/09): A question was asked about how the rest of the league stacks up on this list. Here are the results:

6 Prospects: Texas
5 Prospects: Oakland, Atlanta, Milwaukee, LA Dodgers, Florida, Baltimore, Tampa Bay
4 Prospects: Toronto, San Francisco, Boston
3 Prospects: St. Louis, Cleveland, Seattle, NY Mets, Washington, San Diego, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Colorado, Chicago-AL
2 Prospects: LA Angels, Chicago-NL, Arizona, Kansas City, Minnesota, NY Yankees
1 Prospect: Houston, Detroit

The Pirates rank in the middle of the pack, with eight teams below them, and eleven teams ranking ahead of them. Of course, since the Pirates are behind everyone at the major league level, it would help if they were in one of the higher groups. The upside is that two of their three prospects rank in the top 25.